… I don’t see why. I’ve always thought that an anal sense of humour was very common among my age group, though I may be mistaken. Surely, nice things are dull, and nasty things are funny. The nastier a thing is, the funnier it gets.
Anyway, here’s the second item. It’s dated August 1st, no year given, so it must have been penned during my summer holiday in London.
Told Geof how much I wanted to fuck an Older Woman. He said it beat him why, since I was always going on about how horrible they looked. He asked how the fuck I knew, anyway, having never poked one or seen one naked. I had no reply.
… I wonder. Transferred disgust of my own body? No; too boring. Dislike of women ? Hardly, because I think male oldsters look just as dreadful, if less divertingly so. Sound distrust of personal vanity plus literary relish of physical grotesqueries. Could be … Sheer rhetoric ? Yes.
I go over to the chair and sit down carefully, my legs on one arm and my head against the other, as if it were cradling me: teenagewise. I free the staple with my fingernails and marry the two items with a paperclip, instead. I don’t think they can be that closely connected.
Telephone pips.
‘Hello, is Charles Highway there please?’
‘It’s me. Hello Gloria,’ I said, my voice adapting to Cockney cadences. ‘How’re you?’
‘Charles.’
‘What?’
‘I know you’re going to murder me if I tell you.’
‘What?’
‘If I tell you.’
Tell me what?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Go on. I won’t mind, I promise.’
‘It’s so awful… I got this pink slip this morning.’
Oh. Was that all. ‘What do you look like in it?’ I asked sexily.
‘No, in the post, Charles. It says I’ve got an infection, and that I’ve got to tell everybody, you know, I’ve-‘
I steadied myself against the banisters. ‘What sort of infection?’
Try chum…”
‘What? Spell it.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Spell it out.’
T,r,i,c,h,o,m,o,n,a,s. – But it’s not serious. I went to the clinic and the doctor gave me these pills you take for five days and that’s all. Then you’re all right. Charles?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘Are you really furious with me?’
There was no one in so I spoke quite loudly.
‘I see, I see. Trichomonas. So what do I do? what do I do? what do I do? Just go to the doc’s, slam it on the table, tell him I’ve got a tricky dicky and he gives me the pills and I take them and that’s that?’
‘You are furious with me, aren’t you.’
I sighed. ‘No. Not with you. Wasn’t your fault.’
‘Oh, Charles.’
‘Who was it, by the way? Any leads? Any ideas?’
‘Yeah. Terry. Haven’t been with anyone else, and the man said it couldn’t be you, because of the…’
‘Incubation period. Oh well. How long before you can start going to bed with people again ?’
‘I didn’t ask. Not long.’
‘Why haven’t I got any symptoms ?’
‘Men don’t with this. Only girls do.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘You know. Itching, hurts when I go to the toilet.’
‘Mm, I know.’
‘I’m sorry, Charles.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. Perhaps I’ll see you, when it’s all over.’
This be Nature’s way of recommending monogamy.
From the gyppo in Belsize Park, of the grimy stomach: crabs – ant-hill groin. The cure: five nights running with nova balls. You apply milky ointment, and wait, biting a penny, cigarette up either nostril. Five nights running I was back in the bathroom, trying, with no effect, to wash it off again. The unearthly anguish goes on taking you by surprise. Then, once more, ten days later, for luck.
From Pepita Manehian: clap. That was nine months ago. Pepita was an inmate of one of Oxford’s many A-Level/secretarial colleges, establishments which supply the town with a large proportion of its eligible womenfolk. She wasn’t very good-looking, of course; if she had been she could have taken her pick of the undergraduates and wouldn’t need blackheaded sixth-formers. Made the girl mine in a lavatory at some weekend party. (All the bedrooms were occupied; but it was quite a spacious closet, with a rug, some towels, and tissues a-plenty.) We did well, even though, in the dying moments, Pepi smashed her head three times against the lavatory bowl, this giving the cramped cleaning-up operations a still more incongruous air.